Cane Literary Elements

Fiction (Prose and Poetry)

Post-WWI/Jim Crow Georgia and the North

Multiple. Third person omniscient as well as first person.

Multiple. In Part 1: dreamy, languid, sensual, and ominous. In Part 2: jazzy, disharmonious, cruel, and cynical. In Part 3: tense, cynical, and confusing.

Multiple: varies by vignette.

Multiple. Generally: will a character come to terms with himself or herself? Will a character find racial pride? Will a character find meaning in the land of the North or the South?

Multiple. In "Kabnis," for example, the climax is when Kabnis declares himself an orator and utterly cuts himself off from his black identity and community. In "Box Seat," it is when Dorris dances and John dreams. In "Becky," it is when the house collapses.

In a macro sense, there is foreshadowing in the reader's awareness that the circle depicted on the pages between the work's three parts will not close. This is also true in the sense that the action seemingly must return to the South; Toomer foreshadows this often.

"A child fell out of her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest" (6).

1. There are multiple allusions to African Americans' history—slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, etc. There are also multiple allusions to the contemporary era as well: Prohibition, World War I, the Great Migration, and segregation.
2. In "Carma," Toomer evokes sleep through referencing Sleeping Beauty.
3. There are allusions to African religion and spirituality.

See separate imagery entry.

"Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in the water" (6).

N/A.

Metonymy: In "Seventh Street," black people are referred to as "black reddish blood" flowing into the white of Washington.

1. "Men do not know that the soul of her was a growing thing ripened too soon" (Karintha, 6).
2. "Face flowed into her eyes" (Fern, 18).
3. "Emptiness is a thing that grows by being moved" (Esther, 27).